On getting sentimental about cutlery and cheese graters

I’ve been here almost two years already, and, until yesterday, still had a couple of boxes in DB’s parents’ cellar.
I didn’t unpack them when I first moved in because we (DB and I) still had the crazy hopeful idea of knocking the kitchen and dining room together. One side of the wall* was already down, and adding more things to the miniature kitchen, purely in order to repack them a few weeks later seemed ridiculous.
Then DB’s parents reorganised their cellar and the boxes were buried.

I’d missed things occasionally, and always assumed they must still be in a box and tried to get by without. Mostly I missed kitchen stuff, useful things like serving spoons and lasagne bowls. Like a decent grater. Like the chopping board I also used as a cake board. Like the skewers for testing said cakes. Like the cutlery I spent months looking for before finally finding a set I liked, then deciding it was too expensive for cutlery but choosing to splash out and buy it anyway, because it felt good and I liked it and because why on earth not?! Back then, I apparently had a lot of free thinking space for thoughts about cutlery.

Hmm.

Anyway.

As I said, the move was almost two years ago, and we still have half a wall and separate kitchen and dining room and external boxes.

Perhaps the only way to encourage change is to start accepting what already IS…..

Maybe.

…

Anyway. (again)

Yesterday, we went caving (‘cellaring’??) and came back with two boxes of kitchen stuff, two boxes of clothes I probably no longer fit, an ancient flatbed scanner, a couple of towels and a cushion.

As I was unpacking, I was amazed at just how much stuff I was really happy to see again. (Also at how much stuff I’d packed expecting to unpack again soon. Things like spaghetti and cocoa powder.)

I always thought I wasn’t materialistic. I’ve generally not been bothered about second hand stuff or having the newest whatever. BUT. Apparently I have the ability to get very attached to cutlery.

I never knew a person could get attached to cutlery. I might even have worried about someone who said they were.

It still felt good to unpack it though. Really good. Like I’d been missing a part of myself and not just a handful of forks.

Yes.

Exactly.

You can worry about me now. I won’t mind – I have my cutlery and a cheese grater!

* The wall is basically a row of wooden posts with a wooden fence on each side and with insulation in the gaps. DB and a friend took down one of the fences and took out the insulation before figuring out that they might need some way of holding the ceiling up before they could remove the posts….

Well being a woman in a kitchen-even if it has only part wall- of course you would be attached to the equipment you use; and used to use before getting it lost in a cellar.
Hope the wall is soon removed safely and you can have an expanded area to work in.

Spoons are important! I have a tablespoon which belonged to my mother-in-law [,who has been dead over 40 years] and to which I am very attached. I don’t like to make a pot of porridge without that particular spoon to stir it!

I can empathize about buying cutlery, I had had a set – which was given us a multitude of years ago by one of our daughters but which was showing signs of the wear and tear it had been subjected to, but which I felt was “too good still” to indulge in buying a new set. A couple.of months ago one of our major retailers was having a sale so I went to inspect the cutlery and came home with a lovely new set! It was vastly reduced in price or it would have had to remain there. But I feel happy when I open the drawer and find it there! And my old set was very thankfully received by a young couple who were using plastic handled stuff.So I had a double reason to be glad about the purchase I’d made.
Enjoy your knives and forks and spoons. I don’t think you need to see a therapist just yet!

I enjoyed this post greatly. Reminded me of the times that I, too, opened a box long forgotten. Inside that box were things that I didn’t even know I had missed until I saw the wonderful things. Skybright1 has a fabulous comment and I enjoyed reading that one as well.
Leslie

Ah, cutlery. I don’t think you are weird. Cutlery is exactly the kind of thing I would get super attached to if I didn’t have so dang much of it. When we were single, I had a set and my husband had a set, although they were both kind of pathetic. The Christmas before we got married, my husband’s mother bought us a FULL set (8 place settings plus serving spoons), the same design someone had bought her for her wedding in the 1970s. Then, when we got married she bought two more FULL sets of a different design for the rehearsal dinner, which she promptly bestowed on us afterwards. Meanwhile my uncle came to visit and gave us 12 place settings worth of slightly mismatched gold silverware he had purchased at an estate sale. So that brought us us to 6 sets; I have started giving them aways and still have boxes of them in the closet. Yeah. Cutlery.

Wow! That’s pretty crazy 🙂 you could have street parties and provide for everyone ;). Which do you like best? Is it the same set as your husband likes best?

When I lived in shared housing, there was always an enormous amount of unmatched (/mismatched?) cutlery. One house had 2 complete sets, but when I moved out and into my own flat I just had a spoon (one I’d carried with me for years, in case of emergency icecream). It’s amazing how practical spoons are :).

It took a couple of months to find a set where the metal between the prongs was polished and not just punched out. When I finally found ‘my’ cutlery I bought 2 sets of 6 places plus teaspoons and cake forks (in Germany you can’t serve cake without a fork… and there are some battles I will never win).

DB has 3 sets of almost 6 as well, but his have plastic handles, and I’m convinced there’s icky stuff lurking in them. He obviously denies the possibility 😉 I would get rid of his cutlery, in favour of mine having space in the drawer 😉 (there are even companies that distribute kitchen stuff to people who need it), but he seems strangely attached to it…

Emergency ice cream spoon… Ha! My dad would love you. He is always telling me that prosperity is a half gallon of ice cream in the freezer. (Apparently, I am poor.) We liked the rehearsal dinner silverware the best, as the design was more modern. I re-gifted the the Christmas silverware to my brother, still unopened. Our old sets (including some suspicious plastic handles!) were donated to Salvation Army. The weird gold silverware remains in a box in the closet. I keep saying I’m going to break it out for dinner/cocktail parties under the presumption it will boost our Persian cred (who appear to be lovers of all things gold), but I never do. I’m always too busy racing around the kitchen trying not to burn something to go digging around in the closet.